Tag Archives: Fantasy

The Screaming Staircase (Lockwood & Co. #1), by Jonathan Stroud

The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


The Netflix series impressed me based on a series of books by Jonathan Stroud called Lockwood and Co. about a group of teenagers who fight ghosts in England. I thought it was incredibly inventive. I think possibly the only problem with the series is that it seems to be limited to southern England. I was even more delighted after watching the series, which I meant to watch one at a time, but ended up binge-watching because it was that good. It was then that I found out it was based on a series of books, and I knew that had to be the next book series that I got into.

Thanks, Netflix, I suppose for going ahead and canceling this beautiful series before it had a chance. I like the soundtrack; I like the series; I think the casting was beautiful, and the books are great. I read the first book, The Screaming Staircase, and I liked it so much that I went and bought the rest of them and I’ve got them sitting on my virtual bedside table ready to go. I committed to reading the entire series, hoping that the show would include them, but then they canceled it. Way to go Netflix. I do not understand your current plans, because you seem to cancel all the good things that you brought so far. I don’t have any confidence anymore in a Netflix-produced show, because I don’t believe you’ll ever get to a 5th season or the ending of a character arc or pretty much anything.

So aside from the fact that I’m fairly disappointed that the Netflix show ended and interested because The Screaming Staircase took up the first half of the first season of the show, I like this book. When I got the rest of the books, it took me a little while and I came back and reread this one before I started in on any of the rest of them; I found it to be just as engaging as the first time I read it.

It’s got a great first-person voice in the form of Lucy, who keeps us interested in what’s going on. We get to join her as she grows up learning how to fight ghosts and knowing that all the kids have kind of potential end date to their usefulness as ghost hunters. Stroud has set us up with a situation, where people get older. They are less and less attuned to the supernatural, so their ability to deal with what the story calls the problem becomes diminished.

It’s a great read, and I am looking forward to the rest of the series of books that come behind it.



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The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The movies, at least the ones that I saw, were good. Not great, but good. The kids were too old. The Disney+ series, I quite liked a lot, and it made me interested in reading the book again. I’ve had the book in and out of my reading list for quite a long time. I want to like this story. I think the idea is solid, and I think that the concepts and situations are all good.

My major problem with it is that to me, it’s a snooze fest, but also exactly the kind of book I’m supposed to love. Moderately disconcerting.

I don’t like my opinion, but I am determined to give it the benefit of the doubt. I’ve already got book two set aside, but I don’t know if I feel the need to read it before the second season of the Disney+ series (which I hear is already moving forward) comes up. I think that somehow seeing that, might be what inspires me to want to read the second book. I just don’t feel any urgency to get into the next one, and that’s kind of bugging me. Part of my issue is the first-person point-of-view. Not that it’s Percy, but I’m banking on his voice, sounding better as he grows older. Despite all the god-like powers he has, his voice is that of a whiny kid.

I also resent (lightly) the crack in chapter 10 about the furies having Southern accents from “somewhere farther south than Georgia.” I’m from Georgia, from Atlanta. We from that region have an incredibly distinctive, yet neutral accent. It’s a strange bubble to come from. I felt it was a slightly New Yorker elitist line, and it made me feel like the writer thinks people from the South are monsters. Probably unintentional, but it made me less inclined to root for Percy if this is his real opinion. He also seems inclined to dismiss overweight people. I imagine I will write and put into a book something that unintentionally makes someone else feel the same way. I hope not, but it’s probably an eventual truth, that I’d like to avoid.

Is it bad that I think Hades should have killed Percy and the other kids, then appointed his skeleton to lead his army and taken the bolt for himself?

My books are still nothing compared to the success of this one, but it still seems like this is a lesson in how I should strengthen my characters.



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